Friday, February 23, 2018

When it Rains it Pours.....

It's been raining on and off here in Michigan for about a week.  Our basement flooded, but that's all taken care of.
Thursday, however, we woke to no heat.  What now?!!!
In fact, there was no  electricity in "half" of the house.  What?  

After three visits from the electric company, we are now up and running  and this was all due to our neighbors putting up a fence this summer, nicked the electric line (underground) and with all the rain and standing water, it finally shorted out.  I am almost afraid to ask....."What next?".

Anyways, today the new batt was delivered from Quilts Complete.  It's my Quilter's Dream Select in ivory and white.  This will be for my customer quilts.  


I've been knitting in the meantime waiting for a dry basement and "lights".

Here's the second pair of socks I am working on. 


Time to set this aside for the time being.  I have quilting to do.  

You'll find me downstairs at the long arm.  


Wednesday, February 21, 2018

Rain, rain, go away.......

We've been having  torrential rains here in MI for a few days; but what makes it worse is that our basement flooded.   That's where my long arm is.  😓


So....long story short, I had several  boxes of clothing that needed washing/drying and sorting. The majority got donated to our church group that collects clothes for infants to kids up to 15 years old.  

Then my rolls of batt that were just  leaning up against the wall got draped  over the pool table, the exercise bike, the treadmill, the piano to dry.  I'll use this yardage for myself or charity quilts because I know they will get washed immediately.

Two new rolls of batt have been ordered for customers  

New sump pump has been ordered and installed.

Fans are going.

What have I been doing in the meantime?  I pulled that skein of yarn out that I bought earlier  this summer and started a new-to-me pattern for knitted socks.  

They're done.


Hubby wants to know what's wrong with the socks. Men!   I guess you just have to deal with the differences when you have hand dyed yarn.

I only have one more project that I bought this summer that needs to be started and completed, but I am feeling good about getting caught up on my knit projects.

As for my sewing  projects, my Kira blocks are made, but I have to get over to Sharon's house to borrow her special ruler so that I can square up my blocks and then get them all sewn together.  


There's, also, a customer's special applique quilt that needs to get on the long arm as soon as the new batt gets here.  That will be the first thing on my agenda.  

We are still keeping on eye on the rain, the  ground water, the thawing  frost in the ground  and sure hoping that the new sump pump keeps on working since it is getting quite the workout.  There won't be anything on the floor now though.  I'm not taking anymore chances at this point.  

So, hopefully, there will be something new to report sometime this coming weekend.  The batt should be here and I will have started to load the quilt on the long arm and getting it prepped for the batt.  I'm itching to get sewing again....in a nice, dry basement.

Thursday, February 15, 2018

Really.....I only needed needles!

There's a skein of yarn waiting in the wings to be made into a pair of socks, but I needed a set of needles that I didn't have, so decided to run to the yarn shop (they were having a sale) to pick up one set.  The store is called Labor of Love in Romeo, MI.  Well, just in case my gauge isn't right, I picked up the next size up.


But, you know how it is....you can't go into a yarn shop or a fabric shop and not look...right?

In the back of my head I have been telling myself that I thought I might want to make a bunch of socks for myself.  Well, I am in the shop...I should pick something up.....right?

Tell me I am right!  Okay?

I couldn't' pass up this luscious 80% merino and 20% nylon that was hand dyed goodness.  It's by Knitterly Things called Vesper Bespeckled Sock Yarn.  The color is called dark magenta speckle.


But then there was this self-striping,  dark gray yarn with pink, red and burgundy running through it.  These should make up really cute.  It's by Lang Yarns and the color is actually called JAWOLL


Well, shoot!  I am on a roll now.

I have a gift certificate that needs to be used up for another yarn shop in another town.  I might as well go there, too.  Skeins on Main in Rochester, MI.  

That's where I found this beautiful yarn from River's Edge Fiber Arts.  The color is called Rocky Mountain.  


Oh, what have I done?  I still have that one skein in my stash that needs knitting up and now I have three more.  That means 8 socks need to be made.  I guess I had better get busy.  Sure hope these make up fast.  




Wednesday, February 14, 2018

Moving right along.....


Before getting into anything else, I put the binding on the Good'n'Plenty Charity quilt.  It is ready to be donated.  Wish I had a little girl to give this too though because I just love this minky with the Animal Crackers panto on it.

So yesterday, I loaded up my sewing stuff and headed over to Sharon's house for a sew-in for the day with Sharon and Nancy.  I even took my camera to take pictures of all the things we were working on.  Unfortunately, we talked  and sewed so much  that I never took the camera out of my purse.  Oh well....you will have to trust me when I say that a lot of sewing got done.  

I think Nancy got at least three charity quilt tops made.

Sharon worked on a variety of things.....a couple of her miniature pineapple blocks, planning the quilting for a couple of "shirts" quilts that she made, string blocks.....and I just can't remember what else.  Pays to be in your own home.  You can work on anything and all your stuff is there.

I dragged my Zen Chic fabric over there to work on my Kira blocks.  On getting home, I put up what I had on the design wall (in no apparent order yet).


Then today, I finished making the rest of my blocks.  


I have used the gold fabric which I fell in love with as my background.  I am second guessing myself right now that there might be too much gold, but it is what it is.  Hopefully the final layout will be good and I will love this quilt as much as I loved the fabric line when I saw it. 

The blocks are all ready to be trimmed; and then I will lay them out and get them sewn together.

January and February are usually such dreary  months because the  days just drag  out when it is so cold, dark in the morning, dark early at night.  I find the cure is to get busy with my sewing.

There will be some more quilting and sewing coming soon, so stay tuned and happy quilting.  Spring IS on its way.....sooner or later.


Sunday, February 11, 2018

On a roll again.

I've been out of commission for a week after breaking a needle on my long arm which in turn broke a part related to the bobbin housing.  

The two new parts (I bought an extra!) are on the left.

The part on the right is the one that got bent when I broke my needle.  













So, you can imagine, that once my part came in, I was pretty anxious to get back to quilting. 

I had a quilt on the long arm from when I gave a Beginner's Class for new APQS long arm owners and only got halfway into quilting it when the needle broke.  It was a quilt kit that I picked up from my daytime guild, so it was serving double duty....class and when finished, it was going to charity.

My Millie  is fixed, timed and ready to go.  First thing was to get this one done and off the long arm.





I quilted this with the Angel Wings panto in chartreuse So Fine thread.

Next one in line was a charity quilt that I threw together with the left over strings from another quilt.

This was done in the jelly roll fashion and I can just see this with some little baby girl on it wearing her pink tutu and black and white polka dot scrunchy on her head.




I quilted this with a baby pink So Fine thread using my new Animal Crackers panto.  It's a little intense, but I really love how it showed up on the minky backing (which by the way is fuchsia).

I just need to make the binding for this one and then it will be 100% done, too.

If that wasn't enough, I had a customer's quilt waiting in the wings.  Her baby green  "plus" quilt is so sweet.  She requested that I meander the whole thing.  So..with cream So Fine on top and cream Fil-Tec bobbin on the bottom, I meandered away.  It will be headed back to California tomorrow.





There just aren't enough hours in a day.  I feel energized after being without my machine for a whole week.  

There are still a couple more quilts waiting in the wings, so stay tuned.  I will be getting to them shortly.  



Sunday, February 4, 2018

Find Your Fade is DONE!

Nearing the end I changed my mind on the colors to "fade" and because of that I ran out of the second to last color (dogwood).  You see here where I ended up using all that I had.

  

Placed my order for another skein along with a possible "last color" since I was thinking the color I had (sorbet) was too dark.


Now...if I could have gone one more color, this one would have been perfect.



But, my order came in and I had to wind them into usable balls.



One more Dogwood and then I bought Shell to be my last color.

Here is Shell being worked up into the "fade".


I'm liking it!

I was sweating it at the very end hoping I wasn't going to run out of yarn.  This is all I had left of my very last color.


The shawl came off the needles on January 31 (the goal I set myself).


Loose ends are woven in; and it needed soaking and blocking.

Here it is being blocked.  Wow!  It's big.


Thank goodness there was no bleeding since I ran out of blocking boards and blocked over onto the carpet.  I wouldn't have done that if there had been bleeding into the water I soaked it in, but you still kind of hold your breath

So this is it.




It's so warm and cozy!












Michigan quilters, take note

  Come see us at our first Quilter's to Quilter's sale.   Don't know what that is?  Well, it will be 28 quilters/vendors selling...